Paris (AFP) – US gymnastics star Simone Biles is set to make her first competitive appearance since the Tokyo Olympics after entering the US Classic, USA Gymnastics announced on Wednesday.
The August 4-5 competition would be the 26-year-old’s first since the four-time Olympic gold medallist withdrew from most of her events in Tokyo in 2021 with mental health and safety concerns.
“Registration…does not guarantee participation,” USA Gymnastics warned in the statement.
“Every athlete is at a different place in their season and career, and we will support each of them, wherever they are in their journey,” said USA Gymnastics chief programs officer Stefanie Korepin.
In 2016, Biles won four Olympic gold medals at Rio, taking the team, vault and floor exercise titles plus a balance beam bronze.
She entered the Covid-delayed Tokyo Olympics as a heavy favourite but ended up with a team silver medal and a bronze in balance beam.
Biles’s attack of ‘the twisties’ — a condition meaning gymnasts lose the ability to orientate themselves in mid-air — is perhaps the most abiding image of the last Games.
Biles said in a video released after Tokyo that her problems had been building for a while.
“I wouldn’t even say it started in Tokyo. I feel like it was probably a little bit deeper-rooted than that,” Biles said.
“I think it was just the stress factor. It kind of built up over time, and my body and my mind just said no. But even I didn’t know I was going through it until it just happened.”
“It just sucks. Like, train five years, it doesn’t go the way you wanted,” Biles said in the video. “But I know that I helped a lot of people and athletes speak out about mental health and saying no. Because I knew I couldn’t go out there and compete. I knew I was going to get hurt.”
After the Tokyo Games, in September 2021, Biles testified before a U.S. Senate committee looking into FBI failures in investigating sexual abuse by former gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar.
Nassar received a life sentence after pleading guilty in late 2017 and early 2018 to sexually assaulting women and girls while working as a sports medicine doctor at USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University (MSU).
Biles has won 25 world championships medals, 19 of them gold, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Joe Biden in 2022.
